Tuesday February 5 ^th 2008
The geek’s friend is even more of a geek than the geek. I’ve seen less high tech computer gear on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. He lives in a flat in Shawlands on the south side of Glasgow.
Shawlands is where the south side of Glasgow tries to be the west end and fails. For my money I prefer the south — less pretentious. Being pretentious in Glasgow marks you out as an industrial strength prick and there are few more pretentious than some that live in the west end — of course there are a few exceptions to the rule and you don’t have to go far south in Glasgow to find the seriously deluded.
Let’s just say that Glasgow has a golden S that runs through it. From the north west to the south east. All the best areas can claim some place within the S. If you take the start and the finish of the S — you’ll not be far from the ‘fur coat and nae knickers’ brigade. I know I used to be a resident.
The geek’s flat was wall to wall with wires, boxes (plastic and pizza) and screens. He took the disc from me like it was a child’s nappy and sighed. The sigh seemed to indicate that such technology was beneath him but I assumed he had been informed by the geek of the pain that refusing to help might incur.
He wandered over to a corner of the room and after a suitably long period of groaning and moaning dragged out a disc drive and a computer with the words Tiny embossed in the side.
‘Nae point firing this sod up on a new machine. This is pre W 95. If my old Tiny still works she’ll read it fine.’
He plugged the box into the mains and spent ten minutes doing a wire thing. The machine took another ten minutes to crank itself into life. We weren’t offered coffee but given the geek’s friend was even less conscious of his personal hygiene than the geek I thought this a good thing.
At last the screen settled down and the geek’s friend pushed the disc into the drive.
‘The Tiny’s drive is screwed. I hope the bolt on works.’
It did and the first thing it came up with was a flashing icon and four stars.
‘It needs a password.’
I looked at him and he looked at me.
‘How hard can it be?’ I said.
‘Depends. If it is some crappy kid’s toy — no problem. But even in the nineties (he said nineties the way I would talk about my grandpa in the war) they could write a half decent protection protocol. We enter the wrong password and I’m in for a night or two of fun. It might just lock me out altogether.’
I pulled out the folded piece of paper and showed him the numbers. His eyes lit up. Four stars on the paper and four stars on the screen.
13,5,79,111,315,1,71,921,2,****
‘Sad, man. Really sad.’
The geek’s friend typed in four numbers and the disc whirred and brought up a menu. I couldn’t help myself.
‘How did you figure the code so quick?’
The geek’s friend smiled. He took the numbers and said ‘Move the commas.’
He did so and 13,5,79,111,315,1,71,921,2,**** became 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,2****.
‘What do you think comes next?’
I could have kicked him but I’d wait until he got to the bottom of the disc’s innards before I took out his legs.
The contents of the disc turned out to be less revealing than I had hoped. There were two files on it, both of the Word variety. The geek’s friend’s computer ground away. Each document had one page and each page had a few characters typed in the middle. The printer whirred and it spat out both sheets.
Sheet one read: ATV9AXLPCIU4D8I3AT9RIPNLC4A903753Q0201
Sheet two was no less cryptic
C2O5M3PIT9EF1G3H211L4LAXLFATCOOONTTARCAPS9E4NDYYARR1Y4DFETR
I stared at both sheets.
‘What the fuck is that?’
I always did have a nice turn of phrase.
They both shrugged and I folded the papers and put them in my pocket. The geek’s friend passed me the disc and we were out of there.
I headed for Martin and his dwindling supply of Highland Park.